


You're a warrior

by keysburg



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Episode 7 bothers me okay, Gen, Stick's an asshole but it doesn't mean he's wrong, Stick's visit has lingering impacts, This goes nowhere, matt whump, something's weird and it don't look good, there's something strange in the neighborhood, work-life balance is tricky, work-life-vigilante balance is worse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:19:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4676633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysburg/pseuds/keysburg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Season 1, Stick's words keep returning to torture Matt</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Soft stuff isn't life, it's death

_Someday those silk sheets are going to crawl up behind you, wrap themselves around your neck and choke you to death._

In the days after the arrest (and re-arrest) of Wilson Fisk, Nelson and Murdock had gotten a fair amount of attention for handling Detective Hoffman’s confession to the FBI. With that attention had come new clients and new cases. Meanwhile, word had apparently gotten out about Daredevil and petty crime in Hell’s Kitchen was suddenly down over eighty percent. It was only a matter of time before more organized crime moved into the void that Fisk’s huge operation had left. Matt knew that, but he hadn’t had time to think about it. They ended up with three more tenancy cases with multiple clients, defending three - no, four - Kitchen residents who had been falsely accused of petty crimes. And when Matt wasn’t looking, two different women had sweet-talked Foggy into taking on their divorce cases. Both the divorces and the tenancy cases required major research and preparation, not to mention that they involved clients with demands that were rather outsized for what they were currently paying. It meant lots of busy days of research, writing arguments, and strategizing for court with difficult clients. It was good to be busy, but it was tiring in a way that made crawling around on rooftops and punching bad guys seem even more difficult than normal. 

He still spent his time on the roof tops, but he found himself only half listening for his city’s distress, his brain frequently drifting back his cases. He was just a block from Mrs. Cardena’s old building, re-writing a briefing on one of the tenancy cases in his head, when he heard it. A man’s fearful crying and racing heart was practically at his feet as he was dragged through an alley by two other men with relatively steady heart beats. Matt took a running jump to land, rolling, on the roof west of his position. He ran across the roof and then dropped into the narrow alleyway on the far side, swinging from the window ledges on either side to control his speed and descent. He landed in a crouch in front of the three men, and growled.

“Let. Him. Go.” Matt sensed the men look at each other and the one on the left whispered something in… Japanese? He didn’t have time to try and parse the language as the same man dropped their captive and charged him. Matt shifted, moving his left foot behind him and pivoting sideways to make a smaller target. Before the other man reached him, he felt the short man’s muscles coil, and then he was flipping through the air to land behind Matt. His fists moved in precise strikes to land right over his kidneys, although the reinforced suit made the sharp strikes feel more like dull throbs. As Matt pivoted, throwing his right elbow into the man’s solar plexus, he heard a soft cry in front of him. But other two weren’t moving, so Matt continued to pivot, drawing his billy clubs from his holster with his left hand as he went. The man behind him blocked his elbow with a stiff arm and struck at Matt’s throat. Matt dropped his head to protect his throat, the horns of his suit catching on the man’s clothing even as Matt took two quick steps backward, out of the man’s reach, and putting his own back against the alley wall. At that moment he scented coppery blood and steel as both men rushed him at once. He managed to strike the first man across the jaw with the clubs in his left hand, knocking him back. With his right hand he caught the right wrist of the other man, driving his thumb into the tendons and making him drop the bloody knife aimed for his throat. He had no defense for the knife man’s left hand which moved at equal speed, slipping between the more reinforced bits of his suit on his right side - and then between his last couple ribs. Fuck, that hurt. The right hand was disarmed, so Matt brought his right elbow down on the man’s left arm as he struck towards the second man’s jaw with the billy clubs in his left hand. He felt a catch in his ribs as the billy clubs met empty air. The second man had jumped back, and as Matt stood up to press his attack, there was a pop accompanied by the smell of smoke and sulfur and both attackers completely vanished from his senses. 

More damn ninjas. Matt listened intently, but all he heard was the heartbeat of the man who had been captive, slowing at a terrifying rate. He had met a similar man once, with an eerily calm heartbeat and the ability to make it all but stop. They must have done the same trick, using a little firecracker flash to hide their retreat (and obscure his sense of smell). Under that, the smell of blood was growing quickly as it was rushing from the former captive’s chest. He bent over the man, trying to stop the bleeding, but he could hear the tears in the man’s lungs and heart, the sound of blood running between torn flesh.

“Stop. Black. Void.” the man choked, as his lungs filled with blood. He died less than a minute after the ninjas had vanished, as Matt listened helplessly, hoping the men weren’t waiting nearby to come back after him. After the captive’s heart stopped beating, there was nothing. 

Matt straightened and felt the scrape of metal against bone. Great, the tip of the second man’s knife had broken off between his ribs. As much as it hurt, he made himself take a deep breath. His lung was unpunctured, fortunately. But the knife tip would have to come out. Moving carefully, he waited until he was several blocks away to phone Claire.

“Hey Matt, you bleeding?” she answered calmly, but her voice bore the slightest thread of tension. 

“Uh, hi Claire. Yeah, got a pretty good cut. Can I come by?” Better to tell her about the knife tip after he got to her place.

“Yeah, I’m home. See you soon.”

Matt took a slow and circuitous route to Claire’s, just in case the heartbeat-dampening ninjas were following him. (Damn, his life was weird.) He didn’t sense anything though, not the scrape of sole on pavement, not the faint incense scent all three men had borne, nothing. While he walked, Stick’s voice came back to him yet again. It’s been months but the words return to him again and again.

Stick hadn’t literally mean that his sheets would strangle him, of course. He meant that Matt’s daytime life would prove a distraction in his mission--that it would lead to carelessness that would eventually get him dead. He was only a little injured right now; he had had worse. But tonight’s failure could be blamed on more than ninjas. He hadn’t hit the gym in weeks, and hadn’t had a real fight in even longer. While Stick almost certainly intended to manipulate Matt into his war (whatever that was) it was galling to know that he had been right. His day job was interfering with the mission he chose: to keep his city’s streets safe.


	2. Women are a distraction

_“You had a woman in here.”_  
_“That’s none of your business.”_  
_“When’s she coming back?”_  
_“Never.”_

He went right through the window of Claire’s apartment without announcing himself. She had left it open for him. Her heartbeat sounded calm from outside but speeds slightly at his entrance, taking in the suit for the first time. He walked over to stand in front of where she’s seated on the couch.

“I see what Foggy means about the horns,” she said dryly. “But as scary as it looks, it can’t be working too well if you’re here.”

“It’s been working pretty well,” Matt said, a little defensively, as he removed the cowl. “I just ran into some very sharp knives tonight, that’s all.” He carefully peeled the jacket off, followed by the long sleeve shirt he wore underneath. Claire was already digging around in the medical bag she left by her feet, pulling out everything to give stitches. “Sharp, and brittle. The tip of the knife is still in there.” Claire stopped what she was doing to look at him, and he heard her muscles tense with frustration she can’t quite control, even as she took a deep breath.

“I suppose it’s pointless to tell you that kind of thing deserves some x-rays,” she said evenly. 

“It’s not that deep, Claire. My lung is undamaged. I just can’t get the tip out by myself. It’s grinding against my rib.” She sighed in resignation. 

“I suppose you can hear it if blood starts pooling in your body cavity?” she asked, sighing again when he nodded. “Fine. I already laid a towel down on the couch, go ahead and lie on it.” She stood, stepping carefully to his left, avoiding even the barest brush against him. When he was on the couch, she snapped some gloves on, kneeled in front of the couch, and began to sterilize her tools.

It hurt when she used her gloved fingers to spread the wound open, but apparently she could see the knife tip well enough to fish it out. She probed the wound a little, and Matt wasn’t sure if it was out of concern or vengeance. Apparently satisfied, she sterilized the wound and began to stitch it back together. 

“This isn’t a cheap switchblade tip,” she observed. He was busy pushing the pain down and locking it away, and it took him a moment to answer.

“No. The men I fought were Japanese--they were dragging a third man somewhere. They vanished like ninjas. They got away, I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“First Russians and human trafficking, now mysterious ninjas. You keep things interesting,” Claire observed, the thread of tension back in her voice. “How did this happen?”

“I don’t know. One got behind me. I was too slow to take both of them. I need to work on my speed.” Claire made a disapproving noise, but didn’t say anything as she tied off the last stitch and put a dressing on the wound. 

“You know the deal. Keep it clean and dry. When you’ve meditated yourself closed in four or five days, come back and I’ll take out the stitches.” She threw the reusable tools in a pot after wiping off the blood; she’ll boil them later. The disposable needle went in a small trashcan by the end of the couch, as did her her latex gloves. 

“Thank you, Claire.” Matt reached for her now-bare hands and felt her hesitate before letting him take one. He squeezed it gently, listening as her heartbeat picked up slightly. They just stayed there for a moment, letting several things pass unsaid between them.

But the moment has to end eventually and Matt released her hand so she could stand, bracing herself against the couch. He hurried back into his bloody shirt and not-so-bloody jacket, eager to let her get to sleep. It’s late. He’d like to curl up with her, but she’s made it clear where the line was between them. He jogged home, careful not to pull his stitches.

On the way, Stick’s voice mocked him again, although they had both been wrong about her. Claire had come back, and it was good that she had. She had helped him see that his relationships, limited though they were, helped connect him to his humanity and therefore his morality. He might have a mission but he didn’t have to be a martyr. Stick would have scoffed at Matt’s ultimate decision not to kill Fisk. Matt knew that he wouldn’t have been able to face Foggy if he had killed the man. Foggy, and people like him, were why he did what he did. Claire helped him figure that out. He had wanted to pull her down on top of him while he lay on the couch, to feel her body cover his while she leaned in to kiss him--if she would kiss him again. He was proving Stick right again now; those thoughts were a distraction. He wrest his thoughts away from what might have happened and cast his senses to search for silent ninjas.


	3. The taste of fear

_“You don’t know what’s going on in your own backyard.”_

Matt woke the next morning with an increasing sense of dread. Stick had implied that there was something big going down in Hell’s Kitchen. Hell, he had traveled all the way back here to kill one small boy because of it. Matt had assumed this was just Stick trying to rope him into the mysterious war, but what if it wasn’t? Or maybe that had been Stick’s motivation, but that didn’t exclude the possibility that something was stirring, even in the wake of Fisk’s imprisonment. Something he needed to stop. Nobu was dead, but it didn’t mean the Yakuza weren’t up to something still in Hell’s Kitchen. Stick had claimed that even Fisk was terrified of Nobu. A man like Fisk wouldn’t have been afraid of a single man. That indicated there was probably an organization behind him--one that could have sunk even Fisk’s formidable operation. 

After meditation, the morning paper confirmed his suspicions. His screen reader reported in a monotone that the unidentified dead man found near 44th and 10th had a number of tattoos that pegged him as a low-level Yakuza boss. Stop Black Void, the man had said. Was that the same as the “Black Sky” Stick had come to destroy? Or was it related? He didn’t know, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find out.

He had to go to the city clerk’s office that morning anyway; somehow he had gotten stuck doing background on one of Foggy’s future divorcee’s husbands. She claimed he was hiding property with his brother to stiff her on alimony. The city clerk’s office was staffed by a stern battleship of a woman who would only grudgingly let him hook his braille reader keyboard up to one of their public search computers--and only because he had hinted that he’d make trouble if she didn’t. Fortunately, her assistant was a young man who thought Matt hung the moon. The attention was flattering, even if he didn’t feel the same way. With the assistant’s help, he got through his divorce research fairly quickly, if not without cursing Foggy a time or two. That done, he started following the trail of what had happened to Fisk’s many real estate holdings in the weeks before his imprisonment. 

He had been through much of it before, of course, tracking down Owlsey, but he had paid less attention to the properties than the money. Most of Fisk’s financials were constructed to hide income; this time Matt looked for losses.

It was pretty obvious when he found what he was looking for. While he knew that Fisk had purchased Mrs. Cardenas’s old building from Tully, Matt had no idea that he had also purchased the rest of the block--and sold it all relatively cheaply to one Yamada Tarou less than a week later. The deeds had transferred before Fisk’s arrest and remained in Yamada’s name. More disturbingly, a number of demolition and only one or two renovation permits had been filed in Yamada’s name. It seemed like they were planning on demolishing most, if not all, of the block. What could the Yakuza want with an entire city block in Hell’s Kitchen? Was this going to end up high rise condos as a business investment that also laundered some of their ill-gotten gains, or were they building some sort of stronghold here in the city? And what the hell was Black Void?

The more he looked, the more questions he came up with. The taxpayer ID number for Yamada on the property deeds were all unreadable or missing, and Yamada Tarou was a fairly common Japanese name. Even in New York a search turned up 324 properties owned by someone of that name with something like 60 different tax payer IDs, if one was listed. He dutifully made a list anyway. He could cross check them with police records to see if any of them had Yakuza ties, although someone high enough to be deeded a property would probably be clean, at least in the US. 

He went to have a chat with Brent. While Foggy always brought cigars for his mom, Matt went with a very nice bottle of scotch, discreetly wrapped since he was visiting at the station. Matt could tell from the man’s body posture that he didn’t quite believe his story of wanting to know if one of the future divorcee’s husbands was connected to Yamada Tarou and the dead man in the alley. He went along with it anyway though. Not that it helped. The dead man was still unidentified, neither his tattoos nor his prints being recorded in the criminal system or with immigration. Brent said they suspected he was an illegal alien who got on the wrong side of whoever has arranged his travel. There was nothing at all on Yamada Tarou. 

Epilogue - You ain’t taking care of shit 

_“I’m trying to teach you how to stay alive.”_

After all that Matt was stumped. There was enough that was not right about the situation to keep him on edge, but until another lead turned up, he didn’t know what he could do. He started going back to the gym regularly, and made sure to work the speed drills Stick had taught him as much as the heavy bag. They were grueling and often made him nauseous, but he did them anyway. Stick’s words remained with him, mocking with his failure and the feeling that he was missing something. He used them to motivate himself to prove the man wrong. He could be the lawyer and Devil and survive both, if he never let his guard down again. 

Crime in the Kitchen eventually picked back up, although it didn’t seem connected to the Yakuza. He remained vigilant, regardless. The buildings on Mrs. Cardena’s old block were slowly, methodically demolished. 

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and still the lot stood empty.


End file.
